From Architizer: The Spanish village of Júzcar in Andalucia was once a pristine whitewashed village. Last spring the settlement was painted bright blue by the Sony corporation as a publicity stunt for "The Smurfs" movie. Sony promised to restore the town and provide compensation for doing so after six months. Little did this village of 220 residents realize that the gimmick would jumpstart their tourism industry, which went from a few hundred visitors a year to 80,000 people in six months. The town now wants to stay blue.

This week, the anti-slavery origins of the Christmas tree in the US, iPad art apps, Ai Weiwei documentary, Georgian architecture, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, danger in Pompeii, the state of the New Orleans art scene and Stocking.

Kimbell and Santa Barbara Museum’s iCubist, which is accompanies their Picasso/Braque show (free)

For a sobering look at today’s Christian holiday take a look at the Christmas occupation tree in Bethlehem, which is made of empty tear gas canisters. (via Nancy K)

Check out the trailer for the much anticipated Ai Weiwei documentary, Never Sorry.

The capital of the Republic of Georgia, Tbilisi, is in the midst of modernization but does that mean it may lose a lot of his historic vernacular architecture that gives it much of its character?

Several miles of 17th, 18th and 19th-century walls have been removed to be replaced by reinforced concrete, or breeze-block, the houses redesigned as pastiches of themselves, usually with one or two extra floors, occasionally to be re-fronted with the same bricks, sliced down the middle.

In an interview this week on Daily Serving, curator Dan Cameron discusses the New Orleans art scene and includes the rather unbelievable claim that “[New Orleans’s] St. Claude district … now constitutes the critical mass of artist-run spaces for the entire country.” Is that possible? Always a booster of New Orleans, he also seems to be a big supporter of the LA art scene.

We’re always eager to keep you up to date with the latest memes and online trends, so let us present Stocking, because Planking is so mid-2011.

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning-ish, and it is comprised of a short list NOT THIS TIME of art-related links (10 or less) to long-form articles, videos, blog posts or photo essays worth a second look.